Security News
UK Home Secretary Priti Patel will badmouth Facebook's use of end-to-end encryption on Monday evening as she links the security technology with paedophilia, terrorism, organised crime, and so on. The ever-popular politician will say at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children event: "Sadly, at a time when we need to be taking more action, Facebook are pursuing end-to-end encryption plans that place the good work and progress achieved so far in jeopardy."
Russia's infamous APT 29, aka Cozy Bear, was behind the SolarWinds Orion attack, the US and UK governments said today as America slapped sanctions on Russian infosec companies as well as expelling diplomats from that country's US embassy. "The Russian Intelligence Services' third arm, the SVR, is responsible for the 2020 exploit of the SolarWinds Orion platform and other information technology infrastructures. This intrusion compromised thousands of US government and private sector networks," said the US Treasury.
An iPhone and Android app called NHS COVID-19 is the official iPhone and Android coronavirus contact tracing software for the vast majority of the population of Great Britain. Apparently, the government was keen to have an updated version of the NHS COVID-19 app ready in time, with added location tracking features that would allow users to share their location logs with the health service.
Nearly a third of Britons use the name of their pet or a family member as a password, the National Cyber Security Centre has said as it advised folk to adopt what looks very much like a Register forum user's suggestion for secure password generation. A survey of 1,282 British adults commissioned by the NCSC showed that 15 per cent used a pet's name while 14 per cent use the name of a family member as a password.
In its 2020 Consumer Threat Landscape report, Bitdefender reckoned that most malware and ransomware infections occurred in the first half of the year - with cybercrims being noticeably less active in the runup to Christmas. The company reckoned that during 2020, two-thirds of all ransomware attacks it detected in the UK happened in Q1 and Q2 - with 11 per cent of the year's total taking place in Q4. Similarly, the company reckoned 74 per cent of cryptocurrency miner malware attacks took place in H1, whereas H1 2019 saw 54 per cent of the year's detected total taking place.
In its 2020 Consumer Threat Landscape report, Bitdefender reckoned that most malware and ransomware infections occurred in the first half of the year - with cybercrims being noticeably less active in the runup to Christmas. The company reckoned that during 2020, two-thirds of all ransomware attacks it detected in the UK happened in Q1 and Q2 - with 11 per cent of the year's total taking place in Q4. Similarly, the company reckoned 74 per cent of cryptocurrency miner malware attacks took place in H1, whereas H1 2019 saw 54 per cent of the year's detected total taking place.
The UK Cyber Security Council announced itself to the public realm last week by touting a domain it doesn't own. A brainchild of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the UK Cyber Security Council is billed by government as "The regulatory body, and voice, for UK cyber security education, training and skills." As part of that it "Drives progress towards meeting the key challenges the profession faces."
Britain's 2021 Defence Review states that the nation will not use nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons 1968. Around the same time, the UK Attorney General, Jeremy Wright QC MP, said, "The UK considers it is clear that cyber operations that result in, or present an imminent threat of, death and destruction on an equivalent scale to an armed attack will give rise to an inherent right to take action in self-defense, as recognized in Article 51 of the UN Charter."
called for more and continued industry collaboration amongst membership and training bodies linked with cybersecurity skills and professional development. Doing so will bolster the cross-industry work that has built the new UK Cyber Security Council, as well as further collective efforts to advocate for members and greater industry awareness of cybersecurity trends and threats.
The Harris Federation, a not-for-profit charity responsible for running 50 primary and secondary academies in London and Essex, has become the latest UK education body to fall victim to ransomware. In a message to pupils and parents, the group, which is led and run by teachers, admitted that criminals had meddled with its servers.